AP Lang: April 18-22

They did it!! It was a crazy week, but all of my juniors survived testing, and most were still smiling by Friday.  According to my teacher chaperone and Twitter sources, the HOSA and Robotics kids are happy, too.

This week begins our final push of review for the big test May 11.  We will spend this week zeroing in on language--specifically, sophisticated grammatical constructions and diction.  Many of the students are hoping to break into the high range of scores and, often, sophisticated language is the way to do it. We will start the week developing a “toolbox” of grammar tricks the students can apply to their own writing and then we will spend the second half of the week applying those tools to new writing, old essays, and even the essays from some students in another class. In every case, our goal will be to take writing that is “pretty good” and make it GREAT.

The other big event this week is the full length practice test. I encourage all students to take advantage of this after school opportunity if it is at all possible. We will offer the test two different nights--Tuesday and Wednesday.  Students will begin testing at 2pm and finish around 5:30pm.  It’s a long haul, but I think it is vital for students to go through the whole testing process once so that they know they have the stamina to write three essays in a row. For students who absolutely cannot make it after school, the test will be offered spread out over four days in class. It’s not ideal, but I know some of them have big commitments this week (the musical!). Unfortunately, this is the only week that makes sense to do the test since we need enough time to go over the results, talk about what went well and what didn’t, etc.

Enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend!

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